Can’t Not Write

It’s been a good day. I got a lot accomplished. My yard looks far better than it did last week (a long ways to go though).

It felt good.

But something was missing.

It’s been missing a lot lately.

I’ve been so busy with other parts of life that I’ve spent too little time sitting at this little desk in the corner of my man cave.

There are two writing projects getting some attention lately.

The first draft of Wil Clarey: Mystery at the Mill is over half done! Wil, Gil, and Hannah are currently stuck on the farm with no power in the middle of an ice storm. Yes, I do think of my characters as living their story as it gets written. When I’m done with this blog, I will have to write a little more to help them thaw out.

Reymons is a much more ambitious project. As a YA fiction, it will be much longer and more complex. I am currently restructuring the first part of the story to add more character development.

My busy life and those two projects have left me ignoring this blog. There are so many things that I’d like to write about that I find myself in mental gridlock.

As I brainstormed in preparation for writing, the question popped in my head. “Am I a writer or an author.”

In typical rabbit trail fashion, I looked up the words.

A writer is someone who commits ideas to words.

An author is the originator of those ideas.

So, the answer is:

Yes!

If you only knew the garbled-up tangle of ideas floating around this brain. The more I put off writing, the more garbled it gets.

In other words – I can’t not write!

I’ll let you act as my therapist as I spill out some of the ideas aching to find their way into words.

Novel ideas keep flowing in and out of my brain including:

Daddy Mine – A historical middle grade fiction following a twelve-year-old orphan girl in the Mountains of 1890’s Colorado.

Countdown – A contemporary fiction in which a hacker and a pastor make an unlikely team to try to stop a cataclysmic terrorist attack.

Several other less developed novel ideas.

Blog ideas are floating around the ideas of social justice, cars, travel, politeness, the horror that is grammar, and corporate responsibility. Oh, and maybe one or two focusing on dad jokes!

Finally, I am looking to restructure my most consistent writing.

Last February I revealed here that I was writing a daily devotion based on the Life Journal reading plan on YouVersion. Even if no one else reads it (107 people subscribe to it), it has transformed my Bible study time. In less than two weeks I will have reached the six-month mark on that. Much to my surprise, I haven’t missed a day yet.

I want to improve that, so I am working on a custom reading plan with the hopes of having some season appropriate reading and facilitating multiple levels of daily reading.

More on that later. For now, if you’re interested in following it, you can search for North Metro Life Journal on Facebook.

Thanks for reading a little of this craziness I call writing. If you want to continue your role as my therapist (reader), please contact me. I am currently looking for middle grade (age 10-14) readers for feedback on Wil Clarey: The Impossible Summer, and writer critics for Wil Clarey: School of Hard Knocks. Just click contact in the menu.

Finally, for all my fellow authors, let the words flow.

Don’t not write!